Thursday, February 2, 2012

Speaking of Iran (see the previous post), they may be
turning the tables on the whole US-proposed, European-backed sanctions
regime.The United States is championing
an idea to strangle the Iranian economy by banning the sale of Iranian oil
globally, with the hope being that the loss of their main revenue stream will
convince the Iranians to give up their nuclear research program and perhaps as
a bonus bring down the Iranian government.For the United States, the sanctions are no big deal since the US
basically imports no oil from Iran, for the Europeans though it is a different
matter – Europe accounts for roughly a quarter of Iran's oil export sales.Because Europe gets so much oil from Iran,
the European version of the sanctions have a six-month phase-in period to allow
European countries to findalternative
supplies of oil.

But the Iranians are going them one better by discussing
their own boycott of oil sales to Europe, meaning that shipments to
Europe could stop immediately.To make
matters worse for the European Union, some of the countries that are the most
dependent on Iranian oil are also the European economies in the worst shape,
namely Greece and Italy.The six-month
phase-in was designed to put as little stress as possible on their economies,
but if Iran halts shipments immediately, both countries will need to replace
the volumes of missing Iranian crude on the more volatile, and more expensive,
spot crude oil market, or face the prospect of massive fuel shortages; two
conditions that could push their already teetering economies over the edge.

So far Iran has held off on making their embargo official,
the Iranian parliament was suppose to debate the embargo bill last Sunday, but
postponed action.Other Iranian officials
though are saying that the European sanctions are not a question of if, but
rather when.And in another blow to the
US-led efforts, both China and India have publicly stated that they will be
happy to buy up any excess Iranian crude leftover from the embargoed European
sanctions.Both countries will likely
force Iran to sell them crude oil at a discount, but vast sums of money will
continue to flow into Iran, severely undermining the whole point of the US-led
sanction regime.

Mission Statement

Why A World View? Because I was frustrated by the lack of international news coverage in the American press. Sadly, foreign events usually only make the news when there’s a war or natural disaster someplace. But the world is more interconnected than ever, what happens on the other side of the globe can have a direct affect on your life. So I started this site to cover some of these stories missed by the mainstream media, and to provide analysis and context to others. And my goal is to do it in a way that you don’t feel like you need a PhD degree to understand what’s going on.